For all the drama from WikiLeaks‘ cablegate releases, one of the greatest areas of damage seems to have been to people’s feelings. So much so that Malaysia’s Foreign Minister Anifah Aman (pictured above) has issued a formal protest note to the Singapore High Commissioner to Malaysia. The unkind words included one Singaporean foreign affairs official saying, ”A lack of competent leadership is a real problem for Malaysia.” Mr. Aman described the comments as “totally uncalled for and unjustifiable,” and questioned “how this kind of remarks will help bilateral relations between Malaysia and Singapore.”

Jimmy Wong, a Middlebury College alum and brother of Freddie Wong (whom we featured last week!), finds himself lost in mainland China among the Mao Zedong portraits and Yao Ming statues. But thank god for the things that remain constant, no matter wherever we are in the world: like how annoying LeBron James looks on any billboard.

Just recently, people converged on southern California for the 2010 San Diego Asian Film Fest, where several Asian American actors sat on a panel to talk about their roles in Hollywood. Participants included Harry Shum Jr. (Glee and LXD), C.S. Lee (Dexter), Ellen Wong (Scott Pilgrim vs the World), Aaron Yoo (Disturbia, Friday the 13th), and Daniel Dae Kim (Lost) with moderators Leonardo Nam (The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) and Kevin Iwashina (former agent).

There are some good insights about the need to tell stories that are humanist, and not racialist: Asians simply playing “regular characters” — as opposed to the geisha or computer hacker, for example. Channel APA offers a helpful summary:

They also talk about roles for Asian Americans, being a triple threat (acting, producing, and having unique talent), and creating your own opportunities. You’d be surprised at what roles the panelists want to have along with the importance of Asian American filmmakers. When you delve into this career, be prepared for your parents reaction.

Not content with simply locking away Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, PRC officials have taken two new steps to help people “forget” that he or the prize even exists. The party’s phallanx of internet censors took to their computers to block web sites of foreign news media — including CNN and the BBC — concealing reports of the Peace Prize ceremony being held in Oslo today.

“The Internet is open in China,” said a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry. I have a feeling she doesn’t get out much. Then again, neither does Liu Xiaobo.

We’ve already seen cartoon characters go to college, but ever wonder how dictators would fit into today’s stereotypes? Of course you have (so did we), but Middlebury College student Hae-Song Jung went so far as to get it down on paper, one fateful night while “studying for exams.” Though Jung had seen the popular comic Hipster Hitler before, her inspiration goes further than that:

“My brother and I kind of jokingly call each other names, and I usually use some kind of variation of ‘bro’, like bro-tato chip, broski, etc.” says Jung. “One time I called him Broseph Stalin, and I thought, ‘Hey, Broseph Stalin, Hipster Hitler, that’s kind of funny.’ So I started to think of other plays on dictators’ names.”

The end results were so funny, we just had to post them here. We hope you enjoy them as much as we did.

The “first commercial spacecraft” has returned to Earth from low-orbit!

Developed by SpaceX, the Dragon concluded a brief flight earlier today — the first of its kind for the developing commercial space industry. With NASA retiring its current fleet of space shuttles in 2011 as a result of cost restrictions, private industries began to develop functional spacecrafts to replace the retired shuttles for missions to the International Space Station (and perhaps elsewhere).